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As far as foot-and-mouth disease is concerned, it’s good to be Jewish. Since the outbreak of the disease last month, Jews who keep kosher have faced fewer serious meat shortages than the rest of the British community.

LONDON, Feb. 19 (JTA)  British Jews are welcoming new legislation that allows the government to ban organizations that support terrorism. The Terrorism Act 2000, which goes into effect this week, also makes it a crime to incite terrorism abroad and gives the police broad powers to arrest suspected terrorists and seize funds belonging to…

LONDON, Feb. 15 (JTA)  Despite several high-profile solidarity missions, British tourism to Israel has fallen dramatically since Palestinian violence erupted in late September. Thomson Travel, Britain’s largest package-tour operator, has canceled all trips to Israel through the end of the year, and El Al has reduced its number of weekly flights because of low…

LONDON, Feb. 6 (JTA)  Campaigners for Jewish women whose husbands will not grant them a religious divorce are praising a BBC documentary on the subject. Broadcast on BBC 1 on Monday, “Everyman: Chained Wives” examined the issue of agunot  Hebrew for “chained women.” The 50-minute program included the stories of agunot in both…

LONDON, Jan. 31 (JTA)  A Jewish stockbroker is suing his former employer for racial discrimination after being ordered to wear a Nazi uniform at work as punishment for tardiness. Laurent Weinberger, whose grandmother died at Auschwitz, complained that he had been called “Yiddo” and “Jew boy” by his manager and a colleague at the…

LONDON, Jan. 31 (JTA)  Attacks on British Jews increased 50 percent in 2000, according to a report issued this week. The Community Security Trust, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, recorded 405 such incidents against the community in 2000, up from 270 in 1999. A group spokesman said the ongoing violence between Israel and…

LONDON, Jan. 9, 2001 (JTA)  Lithuania plans to ask British officials to extradite a man accused of Nazi war crimes. Anton Gecas, 85, is alleged to have killed Jews and other civilians when he was head of a special Nazi police unit in a part of Lithuania that is now in the former Soviet…

LONDON, Dec. 13 (JTA)  A British department store chain is vowing not to be swayed by Muslim calls to boycott the company because it does business with Israel. “We are a global player and we support many countries, including Israel,” a Marks & Spencer spokeswoman told JTA. “We have a history and a background…

LONDON, Nov. 21 (JTA)  The Orthodox Jewish establishment here is insensitive to the problem of Jewish women whose husbands refuse to grant them religious divorces, women’s advocates say. The accusation follows a public forum devoted last week to the issue of agunot, as women in this predicament are called. It’s an issue that is…

If a carp is genetically engineered so that it has no scales, is it still kosher? After all, fins and scales are what make a fish kosher in the first place. The question might not have as wide an application as whether a tree that falls in a forest withou